Craig San Roque, Amanda Dowd, and David Tacey, Editors

Placing Psyche

Exploring Cultural Complexes in Australia

362 pages, ISBN 978-1-935528-17-3

From Spring's Analytical Psychology & Contemporary Culture Series

Series Editor: Thomas Singer

Placing Psyche is the first in a series of books that will explore the notion of cultural complexes in a variety of settings around the world. The continent of Australia is the focus of this inaugural volume in which the contributors elucidate how the unique geography and peoples of Australia interact and interpenetrate to create the particular "mindscapes" of the Australian psyche. While the cultural complexes of Australia are explored with a keen eye to the specificity of place, history, context, and content, at the same time it becomes obvious that these cultural complexes emerge out of an archetypal background that is not just Australian but global. This collection shows how cultural complex theory itself mediates between the particularity of place and the universality of archetypal patterns.

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As western cultures become more eco-conscious, the key psychological and political role of place and land is highlighted. In Australia, this has already been the case for thousands of years. We have here unique and accessible perspectives on the ways in which psyche, culture, and place interact. Guiding us from the Nullarbor to the Murray Basin to Alice Springs, this study of land and people opens up a new field that will be of huge value for generations to come—in Australia and across the globe.
ANDREW SAMUELS, D.H.L., PROFESSOR OF ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX

Placing Psyche is an important and fascinating addition to the very few writings which have explored the history of Australia from within, giving us an internal perspective. It shows at the same time the richness of the Jungian psychoanalytic tradition with its links and deep understanding of the "spirit of the place" as a context for the individual, and the mental pain that both as individuals and as a country we have to face in our journey to seek "a place where self, soul and psyche might feel at home".
MARIA TERESA SAVIO HOOKE, PAST PRESIDENT AUSTRALIAN PSYCHOANALYTICAL SOCIETY, CO-EDITOR OF THE GEOGRAPHY OF MEANINGS

In this consciousness-raising book about Australia, what was once "Down Under" is now "Up Above." Placing Psyche is a complex book in two senses. It explores the cultural complexes in the Australian psyche, and it does so with all the complexity that they deserve. This multidisciplinary book epitomizes what I call the "multicultural imagination." It is a boomerang of a book—catch it if you can.
MICHAEL VANNOY ADAMS, JUNGIAN ANALYST AND AUTHOR OF THE MULTICULTURAL IMAGINATION: "RACE," COLOR, AND THE UNCONSCIOUS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. The Nullarbor: Contact Zone as Imaginal Space
Peter Bishop

2. The Lemon Tree: A Conversation on Civilisation
Craig San Roque

3. The Rapture of "Girlshine": Land, Sacrifice, and Disavowal in Australian Cinema
Terrie Waddell

11. The Australian Resistance to Individuation: Patrick White's Knotted Mandala
David Tacey

12. Sydney—"a city of truant disposition": East West 101 (the 2008-2011 Knapman Wyld Australian TV Series)
Craig San Roque with Kristine Wyld

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About the Series Editor:

Thomas Singer, M.D., is a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst who lives and practices in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the editor The Vision Thing, The Cultural Complex (co-editor), Ancient Greece/Modern Psyche (co-editor), and Psyche and the City, which explore the interfaces between social conflict, cultural complexes, and Jungian psychology. He has authored and edited several other books and papers, including Initiation: The Living Reality of an Archetype, A Fan's Guide to Baseball Fever, and Who's the Patient Here?

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About the Regional Editors:

Craig San Roque, Ph.D., is a member of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Jungian Analysts (ANZSJA). He lives in Central Australia, engaged as a consulting psychologist in mental health, substance abuse, and complex cultural trauma. As a relationally attuned practitioner he tries to illumine interactions between cultural forces and the individual and has a special appreciation of Australian Aboriginal thought, perspectives, and the racial dilemma. He contributed to The Cultural Complex, with "A Long Weekend in Alice Springs", and to Psyche and the City with "Sydney/Purgatorio." Additional publications include The Sugarman/ Dionysos Project; "Coming To Terms with the Country," in The Geography of Meanings; and "On Tjukurrpa and Building Thought" in Explorations in Psychoanalysis and Ethnography.

Amanda Dowd, IAAP, is a Jungian analyst and psychoanalytic psychotherapist who trained in Australia and is a member of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Jungian Analysts (ANZSJA). She has a private practice comprising people from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities in Sydney, a place where the old and established mixes with the new and transient. Amanda is a Britishborn migrant to Australia who spent her adolescent and University years in Christchurch, New Zealand. She has a background in ecology, ancient history, and religious studies. After many years working in London in academic book publishing, she arrived in Australia in 1986, began analysis, and later entered analytic training. Her theoretical orientation is developmental and relational, and her particular interests are trauma and the formation of mind, self, identity, and cultural identity.

David Tacey, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in Humanities at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of twelve books, including Gods and Diseases (2011), Edge of the Sacred (1995, rev. 2009), Re-Enchantment (2000), and Patrick White: Fiction and the Unconscious (1988). David is a specialist in Jungian studies and has published five books directly on Jungian subjects, including The Jung Reader (2012), How to Read Jung (2006), and Jung and the New Age (2001). David studied literature, psychology, and philosophy at Flinders and Adelaide Universities in the 1970s, and in the 1980s he completed post-doctoral studies in psychoanalysis and religion in the United States. His studies were supervised by James Hillman and Thomas Moore. He has taught in various Australian, American, and British universities, and is on the editorial boards of several international journals on analytical psychology and religious studies. He is often invited to address contemporary issues, including ecological awareness, mental health, spirituality, and Aboriginal Australia. His books have been translated into several languages, including Cantonese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, and French.

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Contributors' Bios:

Peter Bishop, Ph.D., was born in London from a working-class background, and came to Australia in 1971. He has an M.A. in Sociology and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies, and he is Associate Professor in Communications and Cultural Studies at the University of South Australia. His books include: Dreams of Power: Tibetan Buddhism & the Western Imagination (1993); The Greening of Psychology: The Vegetable World in Myth, Dream & Healing (1991); The Myth of Shangri-la: Tibet, Travel Writing and the Western Creation of Sacred Landscape (1989); An Archetypal Constable: National Identity & the Geography of Nostalgia (1995); Bridge (2008); and as a co-author, Hope: The Everyday and Imaginary life of Young People on the Margins (2010).

Amanda Dowd, IAAP, is a Jungian analyst and psychoanalytic psychotherapist who trained in Australia and is a member of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Jungian Analysts (ANZSJA). She has a private practice comprising people from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities in Sydney, a place where the old and established mixes with the new and transient. Amanda is a Britishborn migrant to Australia who spent her adolescent and University years in Christchurch, New Zealand. She has a background in ecology, ancient history, and religious studies. After many years working in London in academic book publishing, she arrived in Australia in 1986, began analysis, and later entered analytic training. Her theoretical orientation is developmental and relational, and her particular interests are trauma and the formation of mind, self, identity, and cultural identity.

Ute Eickelkamp, Ph.D., is an Honorary Associate in anthropology at the University of Sydney. Between 2004-2009 she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School for Social and Policy Research at Charles Darwin University. Previously, she studied anthropology and sociology at Marburg, Berlin and Heidelberg, Germany, and she gained a Graduate Diploma in Infant and Parent Mental Health at Melbourne University. Her field work has included the study of Anangu children's imagination and social dynamics through a traditional form of sand storytelling in the Central Australian community of Ernabella. She has also done therapeutic Sandplay work with Tiwi children in Australia's north.

Chris Milton was born and raised in South Africa and migrated to New Zealand with his family in 2002. Chris is a Jungian Psychoanalyst and Clinical Psychologist who trained in South Africa and who now works in private practice in Auckland, New Zealand. He is a member of and also a Training Analyst with the Australia and New Zealand Society of Jungian Analysts (ANZSJA) and serves on the editorial board of the online Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology. Chris was appointed by the New Zealand Minister of Health as a founding member of the Psychotherapists Board of Aotearoa New Zealand. He currently devotes his time to adult analysis and supervision of clinicians, but he has previously worked psychotherapeutically with adults as well as with children, adolescents, and their families in both the private and public sectors. Chris has also taught, examined, and supervised in psychiatry, clinical psychology, psychoanalysis, and analytical psychology in both institute and university settings. He has published in the area of infant mental health and psychoanalytic processes and maintains an interest in integral psychology, spirituality, and transpersonal psychology.

Patricia Please, Ph.D., was born in England, lived in America as a child, and returned to England for studies. In 1988 she migrated to Australia looking for a big, youthful, sunny land to settle in. Patricia has worked as a psychotherapist, hydrogeologist, petroleum geologist, environmental social psychologist researcher on land-based issues, and a senior policy analyst for water issues. Combining her professional interests in environmental water science and the psyche, she earned a Ph.D. exploring "Aspects of Self in Dryland Salinity Science" at Charles Sturt University, New South Wales. She is currently working as a social science researcher for the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) in Canberra where she explores the psycho-social aspects of a range of agriculture, forest, and fisheries issues, including the social impacts of wild dog attacks on landholders and the effects of the establishment of marine parks on fishermen and coastal communities.

Craig San Roque, Ph.D., is a member of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Jungian Analysts (ANZSJA). He lives in Central Australia, engaged as a consulting psychologist in mental health, substance abuse, and complex cultural trauma. As a relationally attuned practitioner he tries to illumine interactions between cultural forces and the individual and has a special appreciation of Australian Aboriginal thought, perspectives, and the racial dilemma. He contributed to The Cultural Complex, with "A Long Weekend in Alice Springs", and to Psyche and the City with "Sydney/Purgatorio." Additional publications include The Sugarman/ Dionysos Project; "Coming To Terms with the Country," in The Geography of Meanings; and "On Tjukurrpa and Building Thought" in Explorations in Psychoanalysis and Ethnography.

David Russell, Ph.D., was born and grew up in rural New South Wales. On his paternal side, his grandfather arrived in Australia from Ireland as a young man. On his maternal side, his two lines of inheritance were British convicts, one from Scotland and the other from Ireland. After his training in psychology, David moved into a teaching/research position with the University of Western Sydney as a lecturer in Psychology. Subsequently, he was responsible, as part of a small and enthusiastic group, for the foundation of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Social Ecology and then master's degrees in Cultural Psychology and, finally, Analytical Psychology. After thirty years as a senior academic, David has returned to his private practice as a Jungian psychotherapist in Sydney.

David Tacey, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in Humanities at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of twelve books, including Gods and Diseases (2011), Edge of the Sacred (1995, rev. 2009), Re-Enchantment (2000), and Patrick White: Fiction and the Unconscious (1988). David is a specialist in Jungian studies and has published five books directly on Jungian subjects, including The Jung Reader (2012), How to Read Jung (2006), and Jung and the New Age (2001). David studied literature, psychology, and philosophy at Flinders and Adelaide Universities in the 1970s, and in the 1980s he completed post-doctoral studies in psychoanalysis and religion in the United States. His studies were supervised by James Hillman and Thomas Moore. He has taught in various Australian, American, and British universities, and is on the editorial boards of several international journals on analytical psychology and religious studies. He is often invited to address contemporary issues, including ecological awareness, mental health, spirituality, and Aboriginal Australia. His books have been translated into several languages, including Cantonese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, and French.

Melinda Turner was born in Australia of Celtic descent and lived briefly in England as a child. She is interested in how our understandings of self emerge out of our relationships with others, with place, and with the stories that bring meaning to our lives. She has a background in Philosophy, Education, and Sociology.

Terrie Waddell, Ph.D., is Australian born and a senior lecturer in Media and Cinema Studies at La Trobe University (Victoria, Australia). She has taught and written widely on contemporary media, gender, and mythical approaches to screen texts. Previous publications include: Wild/lives–Trickster, Place and Liminality on Screen; Mis/takes–Archetype, Myth and Identity in Screen Fiction; Lounge Critic–The Couch Theorist's Companion; and Cultural Expressions of Evil and Wickedness–Wrath, Sex, Crime.

Alexis Wright is one of Australia's finest Indigenous writers, working tirelessly for Aboriginal land rights, self-government, constitutional change, and the prevention of Indigenous injury. Her epic novel, the deeply poetic Carpentaria, won the 2007 Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, the Victorian Premier's Award for Fiction, the Queensland Premier's Award for Fiction, and the Vision Australia-Braille Book of the Year Award 2010. Her other works include Grog War (1997), Take Power (1998), and Plains of Promise (1997), short-listed for the Commonwealth Prize and the NSW Premier's Award for Fiction. She is a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Western Sydney, Writing and Society Research Group. Alexis lived for many years in Alice Springs, Central Australia. Her family origins in the northern Australian Gulf of Carpentaria region also include a Chinese ancestry.

Kris Wyld is New Zealand born, of Anglo-Irish and German origins. She spent formative years in London with her husband Paul. She now lives in Sydney. Her 13-year creative partnership with Steve Knapman began on the Australian Broadcasting Commission with the groundbreaking crime series, Wildside (1998/99). In the often-intense arena of production process, she and Steve developed a robust professional relationship—essential for any creative partnership. The values of relationship are a major theme in her work with East West 101. She was nominated for an Australian Film Industry (AFI) Script Award for Episode 2, East West 101. The entire series has now won many awards including the AFI Best Mini Series and the Australian Writers' Guild Award for Best Mini Series, Scripts.